Pud's Poker Progress / Matthew Pitt / 04 January 2012 /

Just like a large number of people will have done I have made a number of New year's resolutions that I am hoping are going to help transform my life both at and away from the poker table. Some are related directly to poker, others to my work and some to my health. All though, it seems, are interlinked in one way or another.

This year I have set absolutely no goals when it comes to numbers of hands played, number of tournaments entered or profit made. By the time December 31 comes back around I will have played however many hands or tournaments that I have managed to fit in and I will have made or lost a certain amount of money. Volume and profit based goals are extremely counterproductive for me and are one of the reasons I have chopped and changed games, disciplines and sites so often in my career, and I use that in the loosest possible terms.

For 2012 I have set myself a number of poker goals but they are about becoming a better player, which I guess in turn would naturally see me play more poker and make more money. One of my poker goals for this year are to only play poker when I want to not just when I have time to play. This has been a problem of mine for as long as I can remember. So often I have found myself logging on and sitting down, in the virtual sense, and playing poker just because I had half hour to spare. During the next 12 months I am only going to play poker when I actually want to, when I am fired up and ready to play the best I can.

Another poker goal is to not play poker after consuming any alcohol at all, even a solitary glass. Someone on Two Plus Two said this was something they implemented last year and it was the best thing they ever did. They created a rule whereby they had to have gone to bed and slept before they played any poker if they had had a beer, glass of wine or whatever. Drinking whilst playing is my biggest leak by far and if I am honest drinking full stop is my biggest life leak but more on that in another blog. We are only four days into the month but I have stayed dry and on each of those days I have played poker, enjoyed it and remembered it! My sample size is meaningless but so far the signs are good.

Poker resolution three is to ensure that absolutely everything I do at the felt has reasoning behind it, something that may seem ridiculous to some but all too often I have found myself on autopilot and literally clicking buttons. This is partly down to drinking when playing but also because I have been playing 4-8 tables and relying completely on my HUD but the last three sessions I have played, all Pot Limit Omaha, I have only played on two tables and every time I have either folded, called or raised I have done so with reasoning behind it. It may be the wrong thought process, who knows, but I am actually thinking about poker again and that can only be a good thing.

Last but not least, especially as I haven't wrote these down in any particular order, is studying the game at least once a day. I will be doing this by either reading a couple of chapters of a book, going through hands that I have played or discussing hands and theory on forums or with friends. Along with boozing whilst grinding I have also become lazy when it comes to studying and if that happens the game starts to first catch you up then completely overtake you and when you start getting left behind it is extremely difficult to catch back up.

I'll be back either at the end of the week or the very start of next as one of my non-poker resolutions is to keep this blog updated more regularly and rediscover my passion for writing and telling stories! As always thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!

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